Monday, August 4, 2014

Sagami-Irvine, CA [2]

Our last visit to Sagami went so well that we recently visited it again. This time, we were just as satisfied, and ran into a great special item!

Sagami's dinner entrees are in fact more like full meals in themselves. Our yakiniku (11.95 USD), described as "thin sliced beef marinated overnight with our original ginger soy sauce, sauteed with vegetables," came with not only a large plate of yakiniku, but also a large bowl of steamed white rice, edamame, an orange slice, a bowl of miso soup, and a side salad! It's a very well balanced meal option--plenty of veggies (salad greens, edamame, cabbage, broccoli, carrots, onion), carbs, and savory, tender beef slices.

The sukiyaki beef curry rice (10.95 USD), described as "japanese sukiyaki beef and tofu with curry sauce," was likewise quite balanced, with a side salad with creamy dressing, steamed rice, and plenty of vegetable in the curry. We really liked the curry sauce, which not only had plenty of spices, but also sweet, simmered onions and carrot; it went well with the sweet, thinly sliced beef and silky blocks of tofu.

The really special item of our meal, however, was the hiroshima okonomiyaki(11.95 USD), from the summer special menu! When the menu explicitly states something will take 30 minutes to be made, and multiple tables are ordering the dish, it must be something worth waiting for-- and in this case, it definitely was.

When we ordered the dish, our waitress kept making sure whether we were okay with waiting the 30 minutes, for she was afraid we would become impatient. Good customer service right there!

Our waitress informed us that traditionally, hiroshima okonomiyaki is not served with mayonnaise; however, she still let us have the option of having mayonnaise on the okonomiyaki. I asked it to be on the side, and so our waitress gave us a side bowl filled with plenty of mayonnaise. They aren't so generous if you want it directly on the okonomiyaki-- another table's hiroshima okonomiyaki had thin drizzles of mayonnaise instead.

Our waitress was amused by my photo-taking and that she wanted to see the photos I had taken of the dish. She recommended that I take this level, close up view of the okonomiyaki so you could see all the different layers-- above is the result!

Sagami's rendition of the hiroshima okonomiyaki was like how Cooking With Dog described it, with a thin, crispy crepe layer on the bottom, plenty of thinly sliced cabbage meshed together with the batter, crispy, browned pork belly slices, chewy, savory yakisoba noodles, and topped with a thin layer of egg, seaweed powder, bonito fish powder, okonomiyaki sauce, and plenty of thinly sliced green onion. What a list of ingredients, and a great variety of textures--bouncy, chewy, crispy--and flavors--clean, crisp cabbage, to savory okonomiyaki sauce---in one dish! Very special, and worth ordering again. And although not traditional, we also ended up using some of the mayonnaise for some bites, which added some creaminess to the dish and helped to mesh the strong and light flavors together.

What a dish, and what a great visit! Irvine is quite lucky to have such a fantastic, traditional Japanese restaurant in the area.